


I'll Share This Lonely View

by meanderingsoul



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 90's Music, Car rides, Concerts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up, Healing, Insomnia, Introspection, Multimedia, Music, Sam-Centric, college towns, listening to music with people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 02:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8825923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: "Dude, I like the same music I always have," Sam had complained more than once. Way more.Sam didn’t dislike Dean and Dad’s music. Not really. He just, didn’t love it like Dean did.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story revolves around Sam and his shifting relationship with music. Sam's music for this story is [here](http://8tracks.com/meanderingsoul/sam-winchester-s-mixtape-1). The playlist is based upon what was on the radio during certain key points of Sam's life, and what I think his likely musical taste would be as a result.

 

Sam didn’t _dislike_ Dean and Dad’s music. Not really. He just, didn’t love it like Dean did.

He had most of the same memories about it as Dean, falling asleep to quiet Metallica, sunny little county roads and Aerosmith, Dad bobbing his head along with Kansas when it rained. Dean had sung along with everything and drummed his hands on the car for as long as Sam could remember, and Dad had to be in a _real_ bastard mood before he’d ever tell Dean to can it.

Sam couldn’t sing at all, couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket. But Dean was good when he tried. Sometimes later on, if Sam woke up at night and stayed still enough to fool Dean he was still out, he even got to hear it.

So, it wasn’t that he didn’t like any of it, or thought it was all too angry or harsh or whatever people who didn’t like the music said about it who weren’t just the ‘devil worshippin music’ crowd. It was just, missing something. It didn’t sooth him like it did Dean, who seemed to have absorbed it all right into his bones like another necessary mineral.

Sam had begged for the radio instead whenever he could get away with it. He and Dean had so many fights about it for a while Dad had started saying, “Now don’t you dare start,” every time they got in the car till it was almost funny. If Dad was in a bad mood though, it was just ‘shut the fuck up’.

Dean had had a cassette player since Sam was almost ten, a mess of cracked black plastic and duct tape that Dean had rewired all by himself at Bobby’s. Sam wasn’t supposed to mess with it. One time he had anyway, but he didn’t even have any cassettes he liked or even know what he’d buy if he did, and he tangled up the headphones. Dean stuck his head in the toilet after he picked him up from school.

But after a while, after some times where he got a motel radio all to himself, learned how to talk to the other kids at school and sound normal without doing something really stupid, like let himself try to make real friends, he started recognizing actual band names. Pearl Jam, Collective Soul, Red Hot Chilli Peppers.  

It wasn’t even that different from what Dean and Dad liked, but then again somehow it was. Something about it was smoother, more energetic, a little less gravel voiced, though Sam didn’t know how to describe it at the time. The songs made him feel something new, and it helped somehow. With everything.

Even though it was just music. It helped.

Dad wouldn’t buy any new cassettes for the car, a waste of money and space. Sam knew even Dean had other stuff he liked, Depeche Mode, Staind, and White Zombie, but they never talked about it. Dean never, ever admitted to liking anything that wasn’t Dad-approved.

It was like how Sam only found out by accident when Dean got his first tattoo at 18, right after Dean’d dropped out and Dad had had some big blow up fight with Bobby. Dad didn’t like that hippie shit, but there it was, a little house outlined in barbed wire on Dean’s upper left thigh. Sam had snuck back into bed, never mentioned he’d seen it. Tried not to wonder why Dean had gone and done it.

Sam’s first and only tat had been the anti-possession one. He didn’t ever want his outsides to match his insides.

Somehow, Dean scraped together enough cash to buy Sam a brand new, portable cassette player for his 17th birthday, bright shiny new yellow, and a tape of the Chilli Pepper’s new Californication album. It seemed like Dean was barely around anymore, always at some shitty job, or at a bar now that he was for real 21, or away hunting with Dad. Dean never wanted to go to a park and swing at night, or check over Sam’s math homework since he was ‘just a fucking dropout Sammy, lay off’, or go carve creepy shit into trees. Sam didn’t want to own up to missing him. It wouldn’t do any good, and he spent enough time feeling like a fucking useless baby, even though he was finally getting taller, and he could keep pace with Dean when they’d run before Sam had school. And he was better at throwing knives. He _so_ was.

But the morning of May 2nd Dean had dropped a lumpy box wrapped in newspaper on Sam’s empty plate with a wink before he turned back to the fry pan and there it was.

Sam didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, Dean hated girly moments, but Dad had been gone for weeks and Dean was scrambling the last of the eggs because he didn’t get paid till the end of the week and Sam hadn’t been expecting a birthday present at all, definitely not a nice one. He had no idea where Dean had got the _money_.

Sam stared at the present until Dean dropped his head back with a heavy sigh. “Sammy, don’t you tell me I got the wrong wimpy music.”

“No, no Dean it’s great!” Sam stared down. Both items were in the original packaging, unopened. Brand new, just for Sam.

“Come ‘ere then.”

Dean held out an arm and acted busy with the eggs but Sam hugged him with both arms, set his face on Dean’s chest and breathed in even though Sam was almost too tall to do that without hunching over, and Dean never kissed the top of his head anymore. But it was ok.

This was still good.

Sam had accidentally still had Permanent Vacation in his player the night he’d left for Stanford, one duffle on his back and the almost a thousand bucks Dean had had saved up, that he’d for some reason left tucked all together in the top of his duffle bag. Sam took every dollar anyway.

They’d fought the whole damn day until Dad finally stormed out and eventually Dean had left to try and find him. Sam really hadn’t wanted to leave it all that way, but he wanted _out_ a whole lot more.

So he walked out and didn’t look back.

He didn’t notice Dean’s cassette was still in his player until he’d already been on the bus towards California for an hour. He listened to it on a loop the rest of the way and tried to be more excited than… alone? Alone wasn’t the right word. He’d been this alone before after all, hadn’t he? He’d been admitted for classes for sure, he wasn’t nervous about that. Everything should fall into place now.

That old cassette and the yellow player and almost all his other things had gotten burnt away in the fire.

Jess had introduced him to Muse, Snow Patrol, Coldplay, her very favorites. She liked pop music too, candy bright and bubbly, but not quite as much, and Sam had never really enjoyed female singing for some reason. But he’d always loved watching her sing softly to the microwave while she watched whatever was inside slowly spin. Usually instant noodles or leftover pizza. She was never actually broke, not like he was, but they _were_ undergrads. Money was tight.

Sam could dance about as well as he could sing and draw (so, not much and not well), but sometimes he would twirl her around their old apartment to her music because it always made her laugh.

Sam had never gotten whatever something made Jess love Muse so much. You probably had to spend more time worrying about human governments than about monster killings to get Muse. And he couldn’t stand to listen to Coldplay anymore. Would turn off the radio if it came on. It reminded him of her in summer, more time spent on the beach with her teaching him to surf or coming to tease him at work, leaning forward on whatever counter he was behind, than time spent busy in different classes, and it made him miss her more.

(And wonder if she’d still recognize him or still love him or be horrified instead, after everything he’d done.)

But Snow Patrol was still good to listen to. He had all their albums on the used mp3 player he’d picked up somewhere in North Dakota and it’d still been with his stuff at Bobby’s when he’d… got back. Music hadn’t been important for a few years after he’d lost Jess, then Dad, then Dean. And by then it was the apocalypse, he’d started the actual fucking _apocalypse_ , and remembering anything other than the rage and the drive to win and to end it was impossible. Sure, he’d had the player hooked into the Impala for a while at first, until Dean was back to completely wig out about it, but he’d never really listened to anything, just had it on for noise. He couldn’t remember his soulless self ever listening to music either. Sam supposed that made sense. You probably needed a soul to love something as impractical as a sound.

Snow Patrol had always sounded like winter, like cloudy skies. Jess had played it in the early mornings. He listened to it a lot at night now, when he couldn’t sleep.

Sam had liked winter a lot more before the inescapable cold of Hell.

Eventually, slowly, Sam pieced back together the collection of music he’d had on cassette and cd and crappy files, everything he’d lost. The little mp3 player filled up with Third Eye Blind and Pearl Jam, Smash Mouth. He took it running when he finally got better, when Cas took Him away, when Sam started to trust his brain enough again to worry about the state of his physical body, to go back to pretending if his outsides were healthy it helped against the rot on the inside.

It was easier to worry about those things, with Cas a broken shell and Dean trying his damndest to drink himself to death instead of feeling the grief.

Then Dean and Cas and Bobby were all gone and Sam forgot about music again for a while.

But things were different now. Really different. Better.

To Dean’s complete and hilarious dismay Cas was starting to develop his own preferences about modern music, and they didn’t always mesh with the hallowed Winchester Family Cassette Collection. Cas seemed to like Zeppelin ok, or Dean might have seriously had a heart attack or something, but he turned up his nose at Black Sabbath and AC/DC. Literally. He’d kind of squnch his nose up and look away out the window. It was _seriously_ adorable.

Then one time, when Sam was driving and Breaking Benjamin came on the radio and Dean was reaching over to turn it off despite the holy shotgun rule, Cas reached forward and _actually smacked his hand away_.  

Sam almost crashed the car laughing at Dean’s look of betrayal and eventually talked Cas through exchanging a high five.

Dean fumed for three miles.

Cas liked Led Zeppelin and Depeche Mode, but also Breaking Benjamin, Muse, Snow Patrol. Dean grumbled every time he got confronted with the reality that Cas didn’t like all his music and Cas absolutely _did not give a shit_ , and watching it never ever got old. Cas really seemed to like Muse, and with everything Sam now knew about Heaven and how it treated angels, he got why songs about manipulative leaders and weird outer space warfare stuff would appeal.

Cas would honestly just listen to anything that had angels or warfare in the lyrics, no matter what instruments or genres the song happened to be in. The total clash of it all together kind of made Sam and Dean sick after listening to it for a while, but Cas had been pretty good about following the new Winchester Headphone Rule.

Sometimes, when they had a moment, when the hunt was over or Dean was sleeping and Sam was not, Cas would sit with him and listen to Snow Patrol, sharing a set of headphones like Sam always saw kids doing on TV now. The track _Lightning Strike_ had always made Sam think of Castiel, Cas and Dean really, way back before Cas doing some things he did now, like sit outside on a beat up picnic table with Sam somewhere, eating carrots and cheap ranch dressing and watching Dean curse out the Impala’s radiator.

It always made Sam picture the same thing, like something from some scrap of a dream he’d had once, some barren scraggly field, the sky full of big black storm clouds above it and a horde of the people-shaped black voids that were how he’d used to picture demons before he knew any better. Dean was there with a glowing silver broadsword, just Dean, not Michael, but Dean was in a battered brown leather and chainmail getup with a helmet that hid his face. And Cas was there too, in plate armor that looked like feathers, and black wings that had to span almost 20 feet, the way Dean had described them one time late at night, when he’d been too drunk to keep the awe out of his voice. In the shadow of Cas’s helmet two eyes were burning an unearthly, bright blue. And the demons were falling all over the place trying to fight them off or get away, but it was so obvious they were outmatched.

Sam was never sure where he was in this, but he didn’t feel like he was one of the demons dying on the scorched earth or even like he was dead and gone. It was a cool dream sorta thing. He’d never told either of them about it.

Now they were flying down I-27, grain fields rolling golden brown out the window. Cas was flopped in the backseat, stuck low powered now for an angel, flightless, but stable, doing ok. And it felt good, doing normal hunts, the three of them. Sam’d never really gotten a chance to _enjoy_ that before. As long as Cas remembered to take a nap a couple times a week he did fine. And Dean always found something new to make him eat, which was usually pretty hilarious. Cas had _opinions_ on food now too.

But Dean was sleeping for more than four hours a night every night and almost never drank more than a second beer, and right now he was drumming his fingers on the wheel along with Houses of the Holy. There was one less Rawhide in the world and nobody had a scratch on them. It was a good day.

Sam finally made himself clear his throat when they passed Plainview. “I know it isn't that late yet, but we’ll need to stop in Lubbock for the night.”

“Uh, why?”

Sam tapped a knee against the door. “Well, I kind of bought us tickets for the freakfest in town before we even made the Texas border?”

Dean scrunched his face up till he looked like a dumbass and said, “What the shit is that?” but Cas’s head had already popped up in the backseat like an electrocuted owl.

Sam grinned at him in the rearview mirror. “Rock concert. Gonna have Breaking Benjamin, Shinedown, and some newbies called Never More opening the thing.”

“So Cas’s emo crap and Shinedown. Nobody good?”

“Oh come on dude, you know Shinedown.”

But Cas was glowering at the back of Dean’s head, and their weird sorta sixth sense about each other was still in full affect, even with Cas’s low powered state, because Dean didn’t even look up in the rearview mirror before he sighed and said, “Fine. Whatever. It’s not like we’re on a schedule, right? Find us a place to stay far away from any Greek life douchebags. I’m not dealing with that. We’re low on holy water.”

Sam laughed. He’d never been in a frat for obvious reasons. He laughed a lot harder watching Dean try to explain the problem with ‘people from Greece’ to Cas.

A grain silo loomed up ahead out of the golden plains and the Impala purred under Sam’s spine.

The motel was a dive, but it was cheap and a ways north of the big university campus and it was only for one night. They’d be back on the road heading down to the Port Arthur area way before dawn.  

Cas carried his little duffle inside, pulled open the heavy, dusty blackout curtain, and laid down in the sun with his face tucked under a flap of his jacket like a bird’s wing. Apparently it was a sleeping day.

Dean was pacing around the little room, refolding some clothes, polishing a clean blade, accomplishing nothing and yawning repeatedly like he really could use a nap too.

Sam went out for a walk.

He still liked college towns, the busyness and energy, school colors everywhere and homemade flyers, the textbooks and laptops crowd hunkered in coffee shops and café’s that Sam had always blended in with, even now when he hadn’t been a student in almost ten years.

It was a nice day, crisp and sunny. Sam wandered through empty alleys and ducked into little stores and stayed far away from the kind of crap student housing that made him almost remember the scent of his and Jess’ place.

When he got back, Dean was already up and had changed into his going out jeans instead of his driving jeans. He’d obviously tried to make his hair look cool, which always makes it look like crap and there were pillow creases on his face. Cas was awake, but was in that aggressively not-moving curl on the bed and Dean was just kinda getting dressed and packing stuff up around him without so much as bumping into a toe.

The other motel bed was still untouched. Sam waited until the bathroom door closed behind him to grin helplessly.

They ate a rushed dinner at the local texmex chain. Sam was feeling nice and only had taco salad. They did have a long drive tomorrow. Cas refused to eat anything but chips and green sauce. It was still bright and sunny outside, but it was getting late. Over near the edges of the time zone like this the days felt long. Dean refused to park on the side of the crowded road, so he paid cash for parking. Cas peered all around them and pulled a twenty out of Dean’s wallet without him even _noticing_ to buy a concert t-shirt, changed into it right there in the lot before Sam could say anything, but no one complained about one semi shirtless guy with a weird tattoo and weirder scars, and Sam made a pretty good door while Dean was doing whatever the hell he was doing to the trunk.

The concert was more packed than he would have thought, the line already a quarter mile long, groups of students and couples and families with excited kids, lots of weird hair, and Dean kept glancing around like he’d really like to ask someone for a cigarette but was apparently under the impression Sam didn’t know he still smoked once in a while. Dean was such a jerk about the weirdest stuff.

There were also a few brightly colored, ragged clowns pacing around the line. One had a huge mallet over their sickening orange shoulder and Sam was _not looking_. It was too damn close to Hallow’s Eve, but why did it have to be _clowns_?

Sam flinched at a squeal from further up the line and Dean shook his head, but didn’t laugh. He was leaning one forearm on Cas’s shoulder, since Cas still had all the give to his physical body as your average, 100 year old, hardwood tree trunk.

Cas didn’t know about the clowns. But when they were heading their way and Sam was staring fixedly at the ground or the road or that one guys’ red Mohawk, Cas squinted at the clowns with complete confused focus until they like, gave up and walked right on by.

Dean laughed at their backs, and at someone’s startled shriek when one snuck up behind them. Cas didn’t look like he had a clue why any of that had just happened, but the hair on the back of his head was all screwy from sleeping, so Sam reached over and kind of smoothed it down a couple times for him, completely ineffectively.

But it got him one of those bewildered, pleased little half smiles that usually only Dean could get from Cas.

They finally got inside, at least no one had forgotten to leave a knife or something in the car and got stopped, and Sam looked up and laughed.

Dean nudged his shoulder. “What’s so funny?”

Sam pointed. There was an old sign on the side of the only real building here, which in faded red script said _Winchester_.

“Well look at that,” said Dean.

Cas tipped his head to the side, looked, pulled out his phone and nudged Dean forward a bit with his free hand. “Both of you go stand over there. I would like a picture.”

Sam was pretty sure Cas had helped himself to some kind of photo filter app at some point, same way he’d acquired every single emoji mankind had made by like, poking the internet and asking for it. Sam had never ever pretended to understand how and why Cas used his remaining Grace for things. But Sam went and stood under the sign. Dean pretended to protest and got shoved again and Cas had at some point learned how to make a fake-sad face, so Dean ended up next to Sam under the old sign, laughing, and Sam was grinning at everything so hard his face hurt.

They circled around to the top of the hill, staked out a good spot with the old blanket Dean had dug out of the trunk, away from all the excitable teenagers but with a good view. Dean put his sunglasses on and laid down and ignored everything while Cas and Sam watched people file in and fill the floor in front of the opening act. It was sunset before they started setting up for the main concert and Dean stopped pretending to doze. Cas had asked something about neon hair dye and that had woken him right up.

Someone walked by selling brightly colored shots in test tubes and all of a sudden Sam _had to have_ one. He thumped Dean in the arm, “Hey, I’m drinking.” So Dean had better not unless he was going to let Cas drive around a bunch of panicky humans. Sam’d fricken earned it after keeping a straight face at the clowns.

“Sure. Got cash?”

“Uh, yeah.”

That must be some older sibling brain thing that Dean just couldn’t turn off. They fought about hustled money and clothes money and ammo money, but as soon as Sam wanted a candy bar or that particular donut _right over there_ , suddenly Dean had the cash.

He got three different colored shots in their little tubes, which didn’t actually taste like much but were strong enough to hit him harder than expected. He’d never been as heavy a drinker as Dean. It got cold as soon as it got dark, dry desert air, sky full of stars and planes and laser lights when Sam tipped his head back and stared up and just _listened_.

Cas was standing, watching the stage almost transfixed. Dean was standing half behind him, an arm over his shoulders with the palm on his chest because these days Cas breathed like they did. He swayed them side to side with the music, just a little.

Sam didn’t dance. Or sway. Couldn’t. Would never again. Twirling around the apartment was so long gone.

But he lay down on the sparse grass on their shitty, old army surplus blanket, a little fizzy drunk and let the music wash over him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, I started this fic on my phone at my first ever rock concert, and while it was like nailing jello to the wall to write it, I feel like I know Sam better now than I did when I started. That's been cool for me.
> 
> While Sam's playlist was obviously the most important one for this story, I ended up making playlists for everyone. I finished the playlists long before I finished the fic, so they've been around 8tracks for some time. Dean's is probably exactly what you would expect and is [here](http://8tracks.com/meanderingsoul/dean-winchester-s-mixtape-1). Castiel's is exactly the nauseating mix of genres I describe and is [here](http://8tracks.com/meanderingsoul/castiel-s-mixtape-1). For Cas, music from the last half century feels like enough of a genre already. Dean and Cas together have one too over [here](http://8tracks.com/meanderingsoul/cursed-or-not). Someday, I might make another one for Sam. I will always have enough of the beach-and-misery tinged alt rock we both grew up with. 
> 
> Thank you for reading everyone.


End file.
